The rain came down in sheets that made the city look almost bearable. Isidro stood at the floor to ceiling windows of the thirty second floor, watching the city blur into something almost gentle. The storm had cleared away the worst of the pollution. For a moment, the skyline looked like something you could believe in. He turned back to the conference table where the scale model sat in perfect miniature glory. His heart expanded with pride as he had spent six months refining every detail, the flood adaptive towers with their angled foundations, the elevated pedestrian corridors that wove between buildings like arteries, the rooftop gardens that would bloom green against concrete. It was his best work. He knew it. Everyone in this room knew it...or atleast he thought so.

The city officials, investors, stakeholders and project coordinators have sat and circled around table with the kind of formal attention that usually meant approval. Isidro had learned long ago how to read these rooms. The angles of their bodies. The way they leaned forward slightly with their prepared smiles. This was going to be easy. He clicked to his first slide, a rendering of the towers at sunset, golden light catching on the glass and gardens. "As you can see" he began, his voice settling into the careful pitch he used for these presentations "the integration of vertical green systems reduces urban heat retention by approximately sixteen percent while preserving commercial density. The residential components can accommodate approximately eight thousand residents while maintaining"

"Aesthetic sustainability" Someone cuts in.

The words sliced through the room with the precision of a knife. Isidro's jaw tightened before he could help it, he turned slowly, deliberate, already cataloging the interruption as unprofessional, a person who didn't grasp the gravity of the presentation. He forced a composed smile. The man halfway down the table had his eyes on his proposal packet, sleeves pushed up to reveal forearms inked with a tangle of bold, weathered tattoos—thick black lines and faded color pooling into stories across his skin. Rain still darkened his curly hair, and under the harsh lights an eyebrow piercing flashed like a tiny coin of metal.

The council members shifted uncomfortably. One cleared his throat. When he finally looked up, his blue eyes caught the glare and threw it back—sharp, amused, and disarmingly intimate—making him, in a way Isidro couldn't admit, impossible to resist and when their eyes locked there was this unmistakable pull that Isidro didn't know what to do with and it almost knocked his balance out.

"You added plants to luxury towers and called it environmentalism," he said, each word deliberate and measured. "That's aesthetic sustainability. It makes people feel good about buying something that's still extraction. Still displacement. It's just dressed up in vines." Isidro felt something spike underneath that feeling—anger, maybe, or frustration at being misread. He'd spent months on this project. Months of calculations and revisions and compromise. "And you are?" he said, very curious to know his name.

"Anastacio Javier Cruz," the man said without flinching at the shared surname. "Tasyo."

The name registered vaguely from somewhere in Isidro's memory—urban farming organizer, grant profiles he had skimmed and dismissed as idealistic posturing. The type of person who believed philosophy could replace engineering. Isidro had no patience for that kind of thinking and here he was hesitating and holding himself back. Maybe it was the way Tasyo held his ground.

"You're still displacing communities," Tasyo continued, his voice steady, and Isidro found beauty in it as he struck off a council member's remark. "You're still raising land value until people who've lived here for generations can't afford to stay. You're still extracting profit from people's homes. Putting vines on the towers doesn't change that."

The far end of the table released a long, quiet sigh and some were smiling; he knew those were the ones who wanted to see him fail. The exhausted sound of someone recognizing that this meeting was no longer going to proceed as planned. Isidro turned off the presentation with a single click. The sudden darkness felt like an admission, though he hadn't meant it that way. When he looked back at Tasyo, he made sure his expression remained neutral, locked down not to show what was churning inside him. He probably was saying what he believed but he didn't know what it was going to cost Isidro. Maybe he knew what he was doing, maybe he didn't; Isidro didn't know his intentions, so he couldn't say anything for sure. He could end this right here, but a part of him found this very interesting—he wanted to hear more this man had to say even though this wasn't the place, and in the back of his mind he worried he might never get another chance.

"Development and displacement aren't inherently synonymous," he said. "That's a false equivalency."

Tasyo smiled then, but it wasn't friendly, and Isidro knew that was the smile of someone who'd found an opening. "You're assuming they aren't," he replied. "I've watched this happen in neighborhoods across the city. You design something beautiful, the government approves it, the land value triples, and suddenly the people who lived there for decades can't afford to exist in their own city anymore. You've refined the process. Made it elegant. But it's still the same thing."

That hung in the air between them. Isidro felt something harden in his chest. Population density in Metro Manila requires vertical expansion. Unless your proposal is asking millions of people to simply disappear? And to that, he countered, leaning forward slightly, "My proposal is that we design cities for survival instead of profit. For actual people instead of investors."

That caused all the voices in the room to erupt, arguing, cussing, and shit talking, behaving unworthy of their positions.

"That's a slogan, not infrastructure or development" Isidro raised his voice and a beat, there was no reply and when he opened his mouth, Tasyo said " And yours is architecture pretending it exists outside of politics" and the room went very still. The rain hammered against the windows.

Damn

Isidro found himself genuinely irritated, not because Tasyo was wrong, but for an entirely different reason: somewhere beneath the irritation was the uncomfortable recognition that he was right. Architecture was never neutral. Every choice he made in designing a building was a choice about who belonged in a city and who didn't. Every elevated corridor and rooftop garden and flood adaptive tower was an argument about value, about worth, about who deserved to stay. He didn't like being made to see his own work that way.

"Do you have practical recommendations," Isidro asked, his voice cooler now, "or are you limiting yourself to criticism?"

Tasyo almost laughed. "You architects always do that." That wiped Isidro's smile from his face.

"Do what?"

"Pretend that philosophy isn't shaping every structure you build. Every line. Every choice."

Isidro just stared at him, unable to come back, and found himself searching for words. Right now it felt like he was pinned against the wall by Tasyo, with no way to escape, and an image came to his mind and it didn't look bad, he had to shake his head slightly to keep his mind clean. He couldn't believe he was turned on, and once again when their eyes met that pull came in more force than he could take and his erection became painfully hard to ignore.

The meeting continued for another hour, and with each passing minute, Isidro found it increasingly difficult to maintain his composure. Tasyo moved through the proposal, not bothering with method so much as dominance. When someone ventured that water privatization had worked elsewhere, Tasyo cut them off mid-sentence. "That's naive," he said flatly. "The flood management infrastructure here is different. Anyone who's actually studied this knows the risks." He outlined displacement patterns next, and when Councilor Reyes tried to interject that the property value increases could be managed through regulation, Tasyo laughed. "Regulation," he repeated, as if the word itself were ridiculous. "We've seen how that works. It doesn't."

He was frustratingly, infuriatingly competent.

But worse than his competence was the way his entire face changed when he talked about land. When he described community farming systems in the City, his voice warmed. His hands moved as he spoke, describing the way elderly growers preserved heirloom rice strains and vegetables that had existed in the city for generations. The passion in his voice wasn't performed. It was genuine and lived-in. Isidro found himself watching instead of arguing, which was a problem he couldn't afford to develop.

The council members began gathering their papers, the rustle of folders and documents creating a soft percussion beneath the low murmur of voices. Someone mentioned "next week," and another voice responded in kind—not quite conversation, more like the restless sounds of people eager to leave. Relief was palpable in their movements, the deliberate scrape of chairs being pushed back, the quiet snap of briefcase clasps, the shuffle of feet toward the door. A few lingered, speaking in hushed tones that didn't quite form words Isidro could hear. He caught fragments—something about logistics, something about the budget—before their voices dissolved into the ambient hum of the building itself, the low whir of air conditioning, the intermittent beep of the elevator arriving down the hall.

Isidro's head was pounding. He remained seated, listening to the diminishing chatter of bodies moving through the corridor, the fading echo of footsteps. The rain had intensified into something almost violent, drumming against the windows in irregular bursts. Water streaked the glass. Through it, the Pasig River was barely visible—a dark, churning smear. Thunder rolled across the city in the distance, that low, rolling sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once, rattling the conference room's glass panels. Another crack, closer this time. The lights didn't flicker, but Isidro felt them strain against it.

Tasyo had drifted toward the architectural display model. He studied them quietly, head tilted, as though he were reading a language Isidro had written without knowing anyone else could understand it. The fact that Tasyo looked entirely comfortable in this space—in Isidro's space—irritated him more than anything else had.

"Are you always this judgmental," Isidro asked without looking up, "or am I just special?"

His eyes widened as he realized what he had just said. Tasyo's laugh came from somewhere deep—genuine, unguarded, without the edge of mockery Isidro had braced for. It was worse, somehow. The kind of laugh that suggested they were conspiring together, not opposing.

"A little bit of both." Tasyo's face scrunched up. That was very attractive in Isidro's opinion.

Isidro looked up, prepared to feel something like validation, but what he found instead was a miscalculation. Tasyo had moved to the model while he wasn't watching. He stood close enough that Isidro could smell the rain on him, not clinging anymore, but dried into his clothes and probably into his skin. His shirt was still damp across the shoulders, wrinkled from hours of sitting.

"You really believe this fixes anything?" Tasyo asked. He wasn't looking at Isidro, but his fingers traced the miniature gardens with deliberate care.

"It helps," Isidro said. The words came out smaller than he intended.

"It sells." Tasyo's voice wasn't unkind. That was the problem. He turned to look at him fully then, not the quick, dismissive glances from earlier. This was slower. Deliberate. Like he was trying to see something beneath the surface. Isidro had the strange sensation of being read.

"You believe that," Tasyo said quietly, "you genuinely believe that you can build something that serves both beauty and justice."

"I designed it," Isidro replied, sidestepping the observation entirely.

The silence that followed stretched between them. Outside, lightning fractured the sky into white angles. The rain intensified. Tasyo stepped closer to the model, close enough that Isidro became acutely aware of the distance between them—or rather, the absence of distance. He could see the details now, the dark sweep of eyelashes, the calloused fingers that had actually touched earth, a small scar near his wrist hidden beneath a bracelet. His lips moved as he examined the tiny structures, and Isidro found himself tracking that movement in a way that made his chest feel too tight.

"You know what your problem is?" Tasyo asked, his voice soft enough that it felt like a conspiracy between them. Isidro raised his eyebrows, waiting. Tasyo paused, something dancing behind his dark eyes. "You're one of those serious pretty men."

Isidro stared at him. The words caught him off guard. Pretty. Nobody called him pretty. Elegant, maybe, on good days. Handsome on occasion. Intimidating most of the time. But pretty, that word landed differently. It was intimate in a way that had nothing to do with professional disagreement or architecture. It went somewhere else entirely, somewhere Isidro wasn't ready for.

Tasyo was already moving toward the door, unfolding himself from beside the model with casual grace that suggested he had no idea what he'd just done. Or worse, that he knew exactly what he'd done and didn't care.

"Later," he said, and it wasn't quite a promise, just a word hanging in the air as he disappeared into the corridor.

Tasyo honestly thought he would never see Isidro Leonardo De la Cruz again after the meeting. He'd only attended as a stand-in for his adviser, who'd been stuck at a conference in Singapore and had shoved the redevelopment proposal onto Tasyo as it would help his research studies and possibly a break too, maybe a little bit of real world experience as well. Tasyo had gone in expecting to sit quietly in the corner and maybe argue a little.

Then Isidro walked in.

Tasyo kept replaying their last meeting in his head, which was annoying for several reasons, the main one being that he still couldn't decide whether Isidro Leonardo De la Cruz had actually been flirting with him or if Tasyo had imagined the entire thing because the man was unfairly attractive in that charcoal suit. The pull between them had been there, that much Tasyo knew. But Tasyo had still pushed back during the meeting harder than necessary, talking over him once or twice just to prove…? To what exactly? Maybe Isidro was nothing more than a pretty face. Still, it didn't matter. Men like Isidro belonged to worlds Tasyo only briefly passed through—glass offices, expensive watches, polished certainty. Their paths had crossed for exactly one afternoon. That was all.

Then three days later his professor called him during lunch and casually said "The development board liked your input. They specifically requested you continue as environmental consultant for the project." And now, somehow, he was in a van on the Expressway with Isidro sitting two seats away, looking infuriatingly composed while scrolling through project plans like he hadn't accidentally destabilized Tasyo's nervous system the week before.

Honestly, he'd expected Isidro to leave holding a grudge, maybe avoid him entirely after Tasyo behaved like an asshole. Instead, the man had shown up this morning with that calm, amused look in his eyes and asked if Tasyo wanted to ride together like nothing had happened. And now Tasyo was trapped beside him in a van, trying very hard not to think about how good Isidro smelled.

Outside, Manila dissolved gradually behind them, replaced by the industrial sprawl of the expressway and then, finally, open sky. The rain fell in sheets that made visibility nearly impossible. Inside the vehicle, the other consultants spoke in exhausted half-sentences about drainage systems and zoning permits. Someone's terrible acoustic playlist crackled softly through speakers that had seen better days.

Across from Tasyo, Isidro sat perfectly straight despite the van's tendency to lurch around corners without warning. His sleeves were rolled neatly to his elbows now, revealing a silver watch and the kind of forearms that made concentration difficult. He wore reading glasses low on his nose—actual reading glasses, which Tasyo found absurdly infuriating—while he reviewed site assessments with the kind of focused attention that suggested nothing else in the world existed.

Tasyo hated how intelligence looked on certain men.

Isidro seemed completely unaware of what his face did to people when he focused on something. The way his entire being contracted to a single point. The way his fingers moved precisely across the pages. The small furrow that appeared between his eyebrows. It made Tasyo want to provoke him purely for the distraction. Which was immature and transparent and, as a strategy, entirely ineffective but you know what fuck it.

"They're from six months ago", Isidro replied calmly.

"Climate damage accelerated after the last typhoon hit", Tasyo pressed. "The entire flooding pattern has changed. Your models don't account for that." Isidro set the document down slowly and looked at him directly. His eyes were dark and steady and capable of pinning a person exactly where they stood, to say "You assume I'm not updating the calculations."

"You assume I trust developers to care about accuracy when cost cutting is profitable."

The corner of Isidro's mouth twitched upward slightly. Not quite a smile. Something that suggested he found Tasyo's behaviour amusing rather than annoying.

"You enjoy antagonizing me," Isidro observed, and there was something almost warm in his tone, which somehow made it worse.

Tasyo leaned back against the rattling seat and let himself grin—Yes, Isidro. I love fucking with you.

Isidro raised his eyes and Tasyo stuttered—no, I mean fucking you, and he realized how bad that sounds but Isidro just smiled.

The consultant sitting beside them sighed with theatrical exhaustion and put headphones on. A wise decision.

The drive continued in that pattern for another hour. Tasyo would raise concerns about floodplain rehabilitation. Isidro would counter with data. Tasyo would question the data's relevance to actual human survival. Isidro would ask if emotion could solve structural engineering problems. Tasyo would ask if spreadsheets understood what it meant to watch your home flood repeatedly. And underneath all of it ran something else entirely. Something electric and persistent and increasingly difficult to ignore.

Tasyo had met attractive men before. This was Manila—attractive men existed in abundance. Pretty men with expensive watches and curated indifference and gym-built shoulders who knew exactly how to flirt and expected reciprocation in exchange. They were easy to categorize, easy to dismiss, easy to move past.

Isidro wasn't like that.

Isidro was restrained in a way that made his attractiveness dangerous. Every emotion looked tightly leashed beneath his careful composure, held under such rigid control that Tasyo found himself wanting to test the boundaries just to see what would happen if something slipped free. It was a dangerous impulse. Entirely unwise. The kind of thing that got people hurt.

Tasyo had never been particularly good at avoiding danger.

By the time they reached the destination, the rain had softened into a persistent, heavy mist that clung to everything. The former plantation site stretched wide and wet beneath gray skies—broken fields flooded with shallow water, abandoned structures being slowly reclaimed by vines, coconut trees bending in the wind like they were exhausted from standing.

Tasyo stepped out first, letting the humid air wrap around him. His boots sank slightly into the wet earth, and the smell hit him immediately—rainwater, rich soil, the green scent of growing things. It was a smell he'd known his entire life. It meant home.

Behind him, Isidro exited the van with considerably more caution, his polished shoes splattered with mud, immediately prompting him to make a noise in the back of his throat. Tasyo's jaw locked tight, his shoulders trembling with the effort of holding it together.

"I'm glad to see my suffering makes you happy", Isidro said, perfectly dry. Tasyo's composure shattered. A laugh burst out of him—sharp and helpless and slightly unhinged. His hands found Isidro's shoulders without thinking, grounding himself, and he hung his head down, shaking with it, shoulders heaving. Then he looked up. Their eyes met, and the world went still for a moment. Tasyo's laugh faltered. His hands were still on Isidro—warm against his skin, fingers pressed in just a little too firmly. He pulled back sharply, his hands dropping away too fast. "Sorry, I—" His voice came out rough and strangled. He ran a hand through his hair, suddenly very aware of how close they'd been, how hard he'd been gripping. "Sorry, that was—I didn't mean to just—"

He looked away, then back, then away again, his jaw working uselessly. When Tasyo finally risked a glance back at Isidro, he found him smiling—really smiling, not the dry half smirk from before, but something genuine and warm that made his chest do something complicated.

"What?" Tasyo asked defensively, already feeling heat creep up his neck. "Don't—"

"You're smiling," Isidro said, his amusement evident in every syllable. "Now you're smiling."

Tasyo opened his mouth to protest, then closed it. Because he was. Despite the embarrassment, despite the way his hands were still tingling from touching Isidro's shoulders, despite everything—he was smiling so hard his face hurt.

"Oh, shut up," he said, but there was no bite to it.

Isidro's smile widened, and then Tasyo started laughing again and Isidro joined him, and suddenly they were both laughing and Tasyo enjoyed that entirely too much.

The local coordinators greeted them near the edge of the property, and within minutes Tasyo found himself crouching beside an irrigation trench, explaining erosion patterns to a consultant taking notes while the nearby farmer nodded in agreement. He tried very hard not to notice how Isidro looked outside the city, all severe lines softened by wind and rain, his careful posture relaxed into something more natural.

He failed completely at not noticing.

There was something unfair about how Isidro could stand in the middle of muddy floodplains, still somehow composed enough to belong in a magazine spread. Wind tugged loose strands of dark hair over his forehead, softening the sharp geometry of his face. He held the elevation maps with the kind of care someone might use with something fragile.

Tasyo wondered what he looked like tired. Or laughing. Or wrecked in a way that had nothing to do with composure.

That train of thought needed to stop immediately and never restart.

"Mr. Cruz?"

Tasyo blinked back to attention. One of the local farmers—Mang Roberto, who'd farmed this land for forty years—was speaking to him in rapid Tagalog about how the floodwater had worsened after the nearby highway development redirected runoff patterns. Tasyo listened carefully, translating occasionally for the consultants documenting conditions, his hands moving as he spoke to illustrate the water flow, the changes, the damage.

While he was speaking, he felt Isidro watching him.

Not casually. Not with the disinterested observation of someone monitoring a meeting. Attentively. Like he was trying to understand something fundamental about how Tasyo moved through these conversations so easily. How he listened. How he translated not just words but meaning.

Mang Roberto gestured toward the damaged fields and spoke quietly in Tagalog about losing three crops after repeated flooding, about watching the land deteriorate, about feeling like he'd failed as a steward of something his grandfather had stewarded before him.

One of the consultants translated : "He says the land remembers where the water used to go. It wants to return to its old patterns, even though the city has changed. The city forgot to ask the land what it needed."

One of the consultants frowned, about to launch into a dismissive comment about the poetic nature of peasant thinking versus actual hydrological science.

Isidro interrupted smoothly. "That's actually scientifically accurate."

Everyone turned toward him.

He crouched near the flooded trench, studying the soil saturation and the way water pooled in specific patterns. When he spoke, his voice was steady and educational in that way that made complex things sound simple.

"Urban development alters natural drainage routes and water flow patterns," he explained. "The land, essentially, retains historical hydrological memory. Even after we've constructed barriers and redirected water, the earth itself still 'remembers' where water wants to go. The water seeks those original channels. It's not mystical—it's physics. Geology. The land asserting its own patterns despite human intervention."

Tasyo stared at him. Well, that was infuriatingly attractive and Tasyo had to clear his throat and look away for a moment, composing himself before explaining it to the farmer. The old farmer nodded approvingly at Isidro in a way that suggested understanding, and continued his explanation. For the next hour they walked the property together in a kind of reluctant partnership: measuring elevations, documenting water damage, arguing constantly about solutions and responsibility and the best way forward.

At one point, after reviewing the informal settlements clustered near the most flood-prone areas, Isidro suggested relocating the residents to safer housing on higher ground.

Tasyo stopped walking entirely.

"Relocating where?" he asked, his voice deliberately calm in that way that suggested it wasn't calm at all.

"To safer housing. Elevated areas. Less flood risk."

"With what jobs? What transportation access? What schools? What community?" Tasyo turned to face him directly. "You're suggesting we remove people from homes they've had for decades because it's more convenient than actually solving the flooding problem."

"It's dangerous here," Isidro said, and there was genuine concern in his voice, which somehow made it worse. "People are at serious risk."

"And displacement kills communities," Tasyo replied. "You shatter networks. You separate people from their livelihoods. You create poverty out of the simple act of 'safety.' That's not solving the problem—that's choosing one kind of death over another."

"You think emotion solves structural failure?" Isidro asked, his voice sharpening.

"You think spreadsheets understand what it means to survive?" Tasyo shot back. It just boil down into the same conversation they had in the van.

Their voices echoed across the flooded fields louder than either of them had intended. A flock of birds scattered from nearby trees, startled upward into the gray sky. The silence that followed was heavy with something neither of them wanted to name. Then Isidro exhaled slowly and pinched the bridge of his nose, and Tasyo noticed things he hadn't wanted to notice, the exhaustion beneath the careful composure, the faint shadows under his eyes that suggested late nights and worry, the tension held so tightly in his shoulders that it looked painful to maintain.

The realization softened something inside Tasyo against his will. Against his better judgment. Unfortunately, that was precisely when Isidro looked up and held his gaze. Too long. Tasyo's heartbeat did something complicated—stuttered once, then picked up pace. His mouth went dry. He felt heat creep up the back of his neck and found himself aware of that, he's making this very hard for Isidro than it already is.

The rain had thickened into a silver wall by midafternoon, drumming against the rusted awning with a relentless metallic rhythm that swallowed every other sound. Beyond the shelter, the fields dissolved into blurred strokes of green and gray, the distant trees reduced to shadows behind the storm. Tasyo sat on an overturned crate, rubbing dried mud from his boots, when footsteps splashed through the soaked earth, while he tried very hard not to think about the fact that his pulse still behaved strangely whenever Isidro looked at him for too long. It came back to him—the way Isidro had looked at him with exhaustion. He hadn't talked with Isidro after that argument because he mostly didn't want Isidro to think of him as an annoying person. Maybe he probably did now.

A few minutes later, he heard footsteps splashing through waterlogged earth again. He looked up to find Isidro making his way toward him with a thermos and paper cups in his hands, his shirt damp at the shoulders.

"Hey."

Tasyo gave him a nod.

"You'll get sick sitting there," Isidro said. Tasyo smiled faintly—this was nothing new to him, though Isidro didn't know that. Steam unfurled into the cold air as Isidro poured and held a cup out to Tasyo.

"Where did you get that?" Tasyo asked.

"I have my ways," Isidro teased. Tasyo rolled his eyes, chuckling as Isidro said, "Just take it, don't split hairs over it. I brought it with me."

Tasyo looked at Isidro as he wrapped his hands around the cup. Warmth swept through his chilled skin, sinking into his palms and wrists like a slow tide. The coffee smelled of roasted cacao and brown sugar, rich and comforting against the scent of rain-soaked earth. Tasyo took a sip, blinked, then stared at the cup. "This is so good." A flicker of satisfaction crossed Isidro's face. "I know."

For a while they sat shoulder to shoulder, listening to the rain cascade from the roof in shimmering sheets. The coffee radiated heat into Tasyo's hands, and the silence between them felt strangely easy. Eventually he exhaled and turned the cup slowly between his fingers. "I owe you an apology," he said.

Isidro glanced at him over the rim of his own cup. "For what?"

"I think I've made things difficult for you."

Something shifted in Isidro's expression. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Tasyo laughed softly and shook his head. "When I met you, I decided who you were before I knew anything about you. I thought if I listened long enough, I'd eventually discover I was right—that you were nothing more than a pretty face."

Rain hissed against the fields.

"And?" Isidro asked. His composure didn't break, but there was a quiet pause, as though he was carefully following where the conversation was going.

"And I don't know, okay. But I do know why I did it—just to prove it to myself."

"Prove what, Tasyo?" Isidro asked. "That I'm nothing more than a pretty face?"

"Yes." Tasyo closed his eyes, the warmth of the coffee grounding him. He thought he would be embarrassed, but he wasn't. Maybe because he wasn't a boy anymore, getting shy of his feelings and emotions. The only uncertainty was how Isidro would react, but Tasyo had already learned that in anything and everything in life, there would always be a variable of uncertainty.

"Why?"

"Because I found you attractive," Tasyo sighed.

"Okay."

"It's just that my past relationships are…"

The corner of Isidro's mouth lifted. "You don't have to explain. I get the idea." He looked back toward the storm and continued, "Usually, from my experience, people see what they need to see. Very few people see what's actually there."

Tasyo studied him for a moment. "And what do people usually see when they look at you?" The question lingered. Thunder rolled somewhere far away.

"Whatever makes them comfortable," Isidro said at last. "The quiet man. The serious man. The reliable man. People prefer versions of you they can understand quickly." He took a slow sip of coffee. "It's easier than admitting someone might be more complicated than the story they've already written about them."

Tasyo said, "You sound exhausted."

"I am," Isidro admitted. "Not of people. Just of being translated… I get that you don't know people unless you try to get to know them, but I don't understand why they tend to fill in the blanks with what they think."

The answer settled between them like another layer of rain. Tasyo lowered his gaze to the coffee, watching steam curl from the cup.

"I get what you are saying, but for me, I think I spent most of my life doing the opposite," he said. "Trying to explain myself."

Isidro looked at him. "Did it work?"

Tasyo laughed under his breath. "Never." His heart began to quicken, tightening subtly in his chest. The warmth of the cup had seeped so deeply into his hands that it felt like it lived beneath his skin now. "I always thought if I found the right words, people would finally understand me."

"And then?"

"Then I realized people don't understand you because you explain yourself well. They understand you because they want to." Isidro's expression softened. "That was a difficult thing to learn."

The rain eased slightly, shifting from a roar to a steady whisper. For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Tasyo looked out at the blurred landscape and asked quietly, "Do you ever get tired of being the person everyone depends on?"

The question caught Isidro off guard. He stared into his cup for a long moment before answering. "No idea, because I've never had anyone to depend on."

"How did it feel?"

"Lonely, unwanted, miserable… etc." After a beat, he added, "What about you?"

"Used."

They fell silent again, the kind of silence that didn't need words to fill it. The scent of coffee mingled with damp soil and cold rain, while warmth lingered stubbornly in their hands despite the chill around them.